[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 65 (Monday, May 20, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2641-H2647]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    REGARDING EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, you have to have some patience to be 
sitting over here and listening to the last 20 minutes of Democratic 
rhetoric. Let us start with a little rebuttal because under the rules 
of the House, as you understand, they do not have to yield time and, of 
course, they would not yield time so their remarks all tell one side of 
the story.
  Let us start with the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). In the 
West we would call the gentleman from Oregon on this subject kind of a 
Johnny come lately. Where has he been? I noticed he just ran onto the 
House floor, still in his Levi's, puts a suit coat on and starts 
talking about what the Republicans have not done with a company called 
Stanley Works which makes Stanley tools up there in Connecticut and is 
trying to avoid U.S. tax by registering with a post office box in 
Bermuda. He says nobody has heard anything about this. He acts as if he 
is breaking new ice.
  The gentleman from Oregon should have signed on to my bill. I have 
got the first bill on that to close that loophole. It is a terrible 
loophole. I had the chairman of that corporation in my office, and I 
gave that chairman a list of the American soldiers that lost their 
lives in Afghanistan trying to defend this country and the interests of 
this Nation. I said that any corporation that does business in America 
has more than an economic interest in this country. They have a moral 
responsibility to their community.

                              {time}  1945

  They have an inherent obligation to their country that provides them 
with the freedoms and the fruits of freedoms that this Nation offers to 
business people.
  This country provides the defense for Stanley Tool Company. And, by 
the way, Stanley Tool Company, which is registering in Bermuda, has 
zero sales in Bermuda. They freely admit all they are going to do is 
get a post office box and save $30 million.
  What bothers me about this, I think we can all agree on the issue, 
Stanley Tool Works, and many of you today, by the way, if you buy 
Stanley tools, you ought to quit buying them, because Stanley Tools is 
no longer that American company. They will keep all their manufacturing 
here, for a while, anyway, but they are going to put that post office 
box so they do not have to pay taxes, like any of the rest of you in 
this room. So keep that in mind. Next time you go down and want to buy 
a tool, you need a tool, do not buy Stanley tools.
  What bothers me about the comments of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio), he comes in here strictly on a partisan issue and starts 
bashing the Republicans. I would say to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio), we have had this bill in place, it is my bill, I know a lot 
about it, we have had this bill in place for a couple of months. I did 
not see the gentleman at any of the meetings. I have not seen the 
gentleman at the Committee on Ways and Means. We have had several 
meetings in regards to this tax issue.
  For the gentleman to come up to the floor, just like a greenhorn, 
that is what we would call you in the West, somebody that pops on the 
scene, you know, is kind of fresh to the thing and thinks they know 
everything, before the gentleman starts up here giving these 
blasphemous words and language and partisanship against the Republican 
leadership, the gentleman ought to look up his bill directory, and I 
think the gentleman would be surprised. Not only do I have a bill 
there, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) has a bill, and 
the gentleman might be surprised there are a couple of people on his 
side of the aisle that have bills.
  To the best of my knowledge, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) 
has not been at any of these meetings in regards to our effort to stop 
corporations like Stanley Tool Company from incorporating in Bermuda 
for the simple reason of avoiding taxes in this country.
  So if the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) would spend more time 
working with us on our side, we are the majority. You were the 
majority. You could have shut this loophole when you were the majority; 
you did not. I hope we as the majority, in combination with people like 
the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) who want to work with us, will 
shut this loophole.
  The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) was correct, it is not fair 
to the American people what this corporation is doing. I hope that the 
chairman of that corporation who the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio) says will make many, many millions of dollars, and I happen to 
believe he probably is correct, I hope the chairman of that corporation 
has that list that I gave him of the soldiers who have given their 
lives so far. Now, this is up to a week ago. I know we lost a soldier 
yesterday. But up to a week ago, those soldiers who had given their 
lives so you would be free to do business in this country. I hope that 
chairman is having second thoughts ever since the moment he left my 
office. My guess would be that he has not.
  But the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), in my opinion, next time 
the gentleman wants to start blasting, it is obvious it is a political 
year, next time the gentleman wants to start blasting us, he ought to 
figure out if we have not already done the work on it.
  I think it gives the gentleman a little more credibility to come in 
here, not as Johnny-come-lately, but come in here and really come up 
with some new information and come up with something positive that will 
help us move the ball.
  Now, how interesting, I see in regards to the second speaker that 
attacks on a very partisan basis and says it is Bush's policy that we 
have to rely in the future on foreign oil, how little knowledge that 
individual, in my opinion, has on ethanol, for example.
  Take a look at I think today's Wall Street Journal. I would ask my 
colleague to take a look at that column, on the editorial, guest column 
on ethanol. Do you know it takes more fossil fuel to generate the Btus 
of ethanol, to provide a gallon of ethanol, than a gallon of ethanol 
can give off?
  This article points out there is a reason that the people who produce 
ethanol use fossil fuels for the generation

[[Page H2642]]

of the ethanol. It is because fossil fuels are cheaper to produce, and 
ethanol, in the long run, you are better off to pour the gasoline in 
the ground than replace it with ethanol, because you use more gas, more 
Btus, to produce less Btus through ethanol.
  My colleague goes on and says all we have to do is have alternative 
energy. She ignores the facts, either intentionally or accidentally, 
ignores the facts of alternative energy in this country. Today if we 
took all of the alternative energy known to the world, all of the 
alternative energy known to the world, and were able to somehow 
magically put it in the United States of America, it would only meet 
about 4 or 5 percent of our energy demand. The fact is that alternative 
energy is the future of this country, but that future is still 15 or 20 
years out there, and, in the meantime, you have got to have oil 
production in this country.
  Now, if you do not support that kind of thing, then you yourself 
ought to quit driving an automobile. You yourself ought to quit 
appearing in a Chamber like this, look how many lights are lit in this 
Chamber, so you can present your point of view. You ought to quit using 
anything that has an oil base to it, which includes, by the way, 
prescriptions, medicine, clothes, you know the gambit. Our everyday 
life is very dependent on those fossil fuels.
  The Republicans have led the way, in my opinion, with the help from 
Democrats, and there are a lot of things we have had a bipartisan 
effort on, of trying to work off fossil fuels. But before we leave 
fossil fuels, we had better figure out something that is going to work. 
We had better figure out something that is going to work. And today, 
throughout the whole world, as I said, everything that works outside of 
fossil fuels, including solar power, would only provide about 4 percent 
of our needs.
  What I would suggest to my good colleague from the State of Ohio, 
instead of coming up here hollering about alternative fuels and about 
this President, which is a direct misstatement, about how President 
Bush's policy is to remain committed to foreign oil, what my colleague 
would be much better, much better off doing is talking about 
conservation.
  If you want to save energy immediately, it is not alternative fuels, 
it is conservation. Put out every fourth light up there in that 
ceiling. Drive your car a little less. Do not idle your car. Turn off 
your light when you leave the room. Make sure your dishwasher is full 
when you wash your dishes. If you want to make a real dent in U.S. 
consumption of foreign oil, conservation is the answer, not come up 
here with some kind of partisan bashing of the Republican Party, which 
seems to be a favorite thing of the Democrats in this election year.
  Now I want to move on to another topic. I hope this evening, I 
really, really want to spend some time with my colleagues talking about 
the land issues in the West. My district is in Colorado. I am very 
proud of the State of Colorado. Colorado is a very unique State when it 
comes to whether it is energy issues, whether it is water issues or 
land issues or forest fire issues. I want to spend some time this 
evening talking about that.
  But I feel compelled, I feel compelled to come up and give the other 
side of the story. And there is something else that I want to give the 
other side of the story. Last week as we were about to adjourn, 
colleagues, oh boy, guess what happened? We had a media circus around 
here. We had a media circus. And I am not trying to be partisan here, 
but the fact is, just like this energy thing, just like this Bermuda 
tax shelter thing, the Democrats last week were jumping for joy as we 
were about to get out of here thinking that Bush knew that this country 
was going to be attacked on September 11 and he did nothing about it.
  That is, on its face, absolutely unfounded, absolutely ridiculous, 
and, in my opinion, scandalous. Show me one colleague, whether it is 
the most liberal Democrat we have in the House Chamber, whether it is 
the most conservative Republican we have in the House Chamber, whether 
it is the one independent or socialist, whatever he is, that we have in 
the House Chamber, show me one person, one person in here, that has 
ever served in here, that would get information about something 
happening like September 11 and would sit on it and do nothing about 
it.
  There is not a person that holds public office in America, whether it 
is the local mayor, whether it is the county commissioner, State 
legislator, governor, congressman or senator or the President, that 
would get information that September 11 was about to happen and sit on 
it, which was exactly the implication the Democrats tried to paint on 
our President last week. And guess what happened? You know, they 
accomplished their goal.
  Here is the kind of headlines we see coming out in this weekly 
magazine. ``What Bush Knew.'' One of the senators over there stood over 
there with the New York Post, I think, ``Bush knew about September 
11.''
  You know, the problem we have got, and let us talk about these 
briefings and the information we get. I got information not too long 
ago from a fortune teller, and she swore to me that there was a bomb 
that was going to go off on a cruise ship. I mean, what do you do with 
this kind of stuff?
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. McINNIS. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman in a moment, 
if he will just give me a couple of minutes, because I would like to 
have a conversation about this.
  I am very upset about this. I am trying to say come on, instead of 
running right over here, and I will tell you, the minority leader did 
not even have time to put his suit coat on before he was over there 
preaching about what did the President know? We need to have a task 
force. The United States Congress ought to get a task force to find out 
what the President knew, when he knew it.
  Look, we are not investigating the President. Why are we trying to 
eat our own? The President did not know September 11 was going to 
occur. For God's sake, he is a Texan. Have you ever seen a Texan that 
knew a fight was coming that did not stand up to give the first slug? 
He did not sit there. He did not have the information September 11 was 
going to happen.
  Now, we all wish that our intelligence network would have been 
better, and it is always easy, it is always easy after a fire to figure 
out where the fire trucks should be, and it has never failed. I used to 
be a police officer, and I can tell you every serious crime I ever 
investigated, I would have people come up as we were doing the 
investigation that would say, you know, I told them there was going to 
be a murder over here in this neighborhood. I told them they were going 
to have a car accident at this intersection and they needed to put more 
traffic lights in here. I told them this school child was going to get 
hit and they needed to have intersection guards 8 hours a day instead 
of 7\1/2\ hours a day.

  It is always easy to second-guess. But what does this do to our 
country, what does it do to our Nation, when on a Friday we can get a 
little partisan pool of people speaking up, and the next week it leads 
to these kind of headlines? What do you think the foreign press does 
with that kind of stuff?
  We have a war to fight here. We ought to stick together, instead of 
coming up with this hodgepodge stuff about, well, Bush must have known, 
and Congress ought to be privy to all of this intelligence. Oh, yes, 
see how long a secret could remain if you had a task force made up of 
congressmen with highly sensitive material.
  Let the President do his job, and rest assured, not one Democrat or 
not one Republican in the Senate or in the House or any level of 
government would have sat on information that said you are about to 
lose 3,000 of your citizens on September 11, and say, well, let us put 
it in this drawer. I do not want to act on that.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished 
colleague from Colorado for yielding. I understand the gentleman's 
concern and passion.
  I would just like to share with the gentleman that some of us feel 
the same as does the gentleman, and that is that the President would 
not have sat on information, had he known.
  My criticism, and I have been critical, and I might add I think it is 
legitimate, is the way they choose to do business in secrecy, and that 
is why

[[Page H2643]]

some of us call for an independent commission such as the Kerner 
Commission or the Watergate Commission to go forward and make an 
investigation in this matter.
  Finally, I do genuinely feel that most Democrats do not impugn the 
integrity of the President. I certainly do not. But I do believe that 
in this instance, with information that was available, not to the 
President's desk, but the CIA and the FBI, that they did not serve him 
well by coordinating that information, for had he had the information, 
he may have acted in a different manner.
  I thank my colleague very much for yielding, and I will do likewise 
when I get an opportunity.
  Mr. McINNIS. I would like to ask the gentleman if he would stay 
around. I have the gentleman from Florida that would like to join in 
the conversation.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Does the gentleman mean my buddy, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley)?
  Mr. McINNIS. The gentleman's buddy, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Foley).
  Mr. Speaker, I think we can have a good, legitimate conversation 
right here. Let me tell Members, the gentleman is well spoken and well 
thought. I agree with the gentleman, I do not think the President was 
well served. I do not think the dots were connected that maybe could 
have been connected. That is not my point here.
  My point is for people to come out here, and I agree with the 
gentleman, not all the Democrats did this, but the gentleman would 
agree with me, I think, it was your minority leader in that room over 
there, talking to the media, what did the President know, when did he 
know it, et cetera, et cetera.
  The implication of that, and, of course, one can see what the 
implication of it is as in Newsweek and all the newspapers throughout 
the weekend. That is what concerns me.
  First I will yield to the gentleman from Florida and then we can just 
kind of all join in, if you do not mind. Let us talk about what level 
of intelligence we should put out here in the U.S. Congress.
  My concern is that several of these memos, for example, may release 
innocently, may release the name of individuals, or somebody brighter 
than us can connect some dots out there and we are going to blow the 
cover of people, like Condaleeza Rice says, who are trying to protect 
these people. So I would look forward to just a few minutes, if the 
gentleman does not mind, to talk constructively about, okay, what 
should our role be and what, by necessity for the security of the 
people of this Nation, has to remain secret with the President and 
cannot be disclosed with 535 Members of the Congress.
  I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley).

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, let me underscore the comments of the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings); I agree. I think we need to find 
out what the agencies knew at the time and why they were not, if you 
will, cross-pollinating that information, because that is one of the 
problems we have to review.
  What I take umbrage with is I think there was a certain amount of 
glee in some of the voices here in this Capitol because they had sensed 
that finally, they thought they found a weakness in the President to 
exploit for political purposes. That is what troubled me. I sense that 
we do have a lot of work to do, and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Hastings) is on the Select Committee on Intelligence; and he probably 
is privy to a lot more than I.
  We do have to find out the failures of the FBI, the CIA, Border 
Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization, student visas. I mean, we have 
a tremendous amount of activity that we have to undertake collectively 
as Democrats and Republicans. But I just in my heart of hearts was so 
startled when we left here last Thursday. I know politics, believe me. 
Both sides play it; our side played it in the prior administration, and 
I am sure that when one is the target of it, one becomes somewhat 
anxiety-ridden, as I was, over the weekend.
  I cannot tell my colleagues how much more distressed I became as the 
days went on when I felt in my heart that individual Members had 
actually not just speculated, but impugned the President, suggesting 
that he not only knew, he almost knew the date, time and sequence of 
events. That is what I found startling. I thought that was launched 
strictly to weaken him up and to potentially create the political 
atmosphere that we currently find ourselves in.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I might add that the President himself, 
President Clinton, our previous President, his comments were when they 
asked him, what do you think about these reports, he said, it was 
nothing to do with intelligence. He said, generally what those reports 
are used for is public sources to speculate on what bin Laden might do. 
A lot of that is pure speculation.
  Our government every day, as the gentleman from Florida knows, 
especially on the Committee on Intelligence, we get thousands, 
thousands of reports every day about this could happen, that could 
happen; and I have had a number of my colleagues, and then I will yield 
to the gentleman from Florida, not my colleagues, but a number of 
citizens from Colorado who have come up and said, look, I think they 
are going to get our water supply here, or I think they are going to 
blow up the tunnels on the mountain.
  I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I especially am appreciative of 
both of the gentlemen, and I thank the gentleman for yielding. I know 
my colleague's district abuts mine, and we have 50 percent of all of 
the vegetables grown in the United States, or grown in my and the 
gentleman from Florida's district. So when the gentleman talked about 
the failure to cross-pollinate between two of our agencies responsible 
to report to the President, I know he knows that from agriculture, our 
cross-pollination.
  I always say that for humor, I say to the gentleman from Colorado. I 
want the gentleman to know that I think the Vice President was correct 
when he said that we need to lower the volume. But I think the Vice 
President is incorrect when he advises the President that this matter 
should not be made known, particularly having to do with the briefing 
that he received; it could be appropriately redacted. The gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Foley), our colleague that is involved in this 
colloquy, was involved in the Florida legislature when we passed the 
sunshine law in the State of Florida. And do my colleagues know what? 
The executive branch of government moaned and groaned, and they were 
Democrats in the executive branch then, they moaned and groaned all the 
way to openness.
  When I go with the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) next week 
in Russia and in Beijing and in Korea, do my colleagues know what we 
are going to say to those people? That they should be transparent with 
reference to their government and that they should have openness. The 
one thing I caution is, and I think the gentleman from Colorado got it 
right, that a media circus can develop; and those of us who serve our 
own egos find ourselves in a position of being consumed by the media. 
That Newsweek report did not come from the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Gephardt); that came from the minds of some editor who quoted what the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), as the gentleman from Colorado 
correctly pointed out, said.
  I thank the gentleman so much for yielding, and I must take my leave; 
but I will come back another time to discuss this matter with the 
gentleman.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman; and I would say to 
the gentleman, he is a member of the Committee on Intelligence, and if 
he does not mind staying for a couple of more minutes, maybe the 
gentleman could very briefly advise the rest of us of the differences 
in the secrecy levels, we are classified top secret, the secrecy levels 
between the gentleman from Florida and I. I take some comfort in what 
the gentleman is saying as far as it goes with the Committee on 
Intelligence, because the gentleman is trained; the gentleman knows he 
cannot do that. But when it goes beyond to the general body, our life 
rotates around the media; and that is where the media circus starts. So 
if the gentleman would just explain a little for the rest of us

[[Page H2644]]

the difference between his secrecy and my secrecy.

  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. First, I appreciate the continuing 
compliment, and I do likewise. I want the gentleman to know that a 
month ago I took leave from the Committee on Intelligence to allow the 
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Cramer), our colleague, to go on the 
committee. That does not mean that all that time before then that I was 
not a full member.
  To answer the gentleman specifically, there are 1,000 people that get 
a general report on a regular basis that are in the loop, so to speak, 
about classified information. There are 20 individuals who get a higher 
clearance and a more detailed and specific report. The report that the 
President of the United States receives, unless the President 
determines, and those determinations are made by him and his advisors, 
are not to be made public, nor at any point in time are they to be 
revealed unless they become unclassified. And there is dispute about 
even that unclassified portion as to whether or not they should be in 
the public realm.
  What I am saying is that in this case, so many people were victimized 
that we would be very wise to take it out of our political hands. The 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) who just came in, he and I get 
along extremely well until we start talking about politics; and when we 
start talking about politics, we have a different point of view.
  What we need this thing to be is in the hands of some people that can 
look at the CIA and the FBI and, guess who else? They need to look at 
the Committee on Intelligence members and all of us and see whether or 
not we were discharging our oversight responsibilities. The secrecy 
part of it can be handled with open meetings and closed meetings where 
necessary. We did it every day in Federal court; every day, and we 
protected the source and methodology of our very critical intelligence-
gathering apparatus.
  The gentleman has been very generous with his time, and I hope I get 
an opportunity to do likewise.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman joining in on a 
constructive conversation during Special Orders.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate joining the gentleman from 
Colorado and the gentleman from Florida. I wanted to speak about this 
notion of an independent investigation, which I think, unfortunately, 
if we look at those who are supporting that, Senator Daschle, the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), there is a real partisan 
question, along with Senator Lieberman, for crying out loud. Senator 
Lieberman, incidentally, is actually on the committee and does not show 
up. That is a matter of record. But he is calling for an independent 
investigation.
  I think there are three reasons we do not need it. Number one, we 
already have it; number two, it is going to drain the sources of the 
Committee on Intelligence; and, number three, it would become a 
political football. And I will explain why.

  Since February, and earnestly since January, the chairman of the 
House Committee on Intelligence, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), 
a Republican, and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, 
who is a Democrat, Bob Graham, have been talking, and are forming what 
is a bicameral, both House and Senate, and a bipartisan, one Democrat, 
one Republican chair, investigation of what went wrong on 9-11. They 
have hired 100, maybe 200, staffers, all have been given top secret 
security clearance. They have the cream of the cream of the 
intelligence community together, some of the best minds that are 
available; and they have been looking into what went wrong, what 
lessons have been learned, what can we do right, what can we do better, 
all of the good stuff. So this blue ribbon committee is already going 
on, and it is balanced.
  Number two, if my colleague can imagine already, there is something 
like 184,000 documents that have already been turned over to this 
committee, and they have the cooperation and the work of over 200 FBI 
agents who are right now working on that. I think it is good for them 
to. But what seems to be suggested is that we take even more FBI agents 
and put them to yet another committee doing the exact same thing. Well, 
somebody has to make sure that the world is being watched and we have 
our surveillance going. I would rather leave the soldiers on the 
frontline fighting the battle than coming back to the headquarters and 
hobnobbing with the desk jockeys, but that seems to be the assertion.
  Number three, the other reason we do not need this is that who in the 
heck do people in this town think will control this? Congress funds all 
committees. It would become a political football because Congress would 
ultimately control what decisions are made through the appropriations 
process, and what appointments are made through our powers. I am sure 
that the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), for example, would 
have a different view than the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), a 
Democrat who seems to be a little bit more balanced, who just left. I 
am sure the gentleman from Colorado and I would have a different view 
of who should be on that committee, but Congress would be the ones 
appointing it. Then, since we already have this bipartisan, bicameral 
committee working, what are we going to do, take the resources away 
from them? It is ridiculous. It is purely politically motivated.
  Yesterday in Afghanistan, we lost yet another American soldier. We 
are really getting down to the tough part of this war, because the ones 
who are left in al Qaeda are survivors, they are smaller in numbers, 
harder to find, harder to identify. The fact that they are still around 
shows something, and so this is not the time for the Democrat 
leadership to jump ship with soldiers in the war theater and start 
their political sniping. Do they really think that George Bush would 
sit on information and knowingly endanger lives of Americans? There are 
a lot of Republicans who had some tough opinions of President Clinton, 
yet I never heard any Republican say that President Clinton would sit 
on information.
  Mr. Speaker, if the American people elect somebody in the Oval Office 
who would do such a thing, there is also the CIA and the FBI. Is the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) saying, and he seems to be, that 
members of the Select Committee on Intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, the 
national security advisors, knew about something and sat on it?
  One can play partisan with the President, and that is maybe fair 
game; but I think it is pretty low when someone starts picking on 
members of the intelligence community, who are nonpartisan, patriotic, 
professional men and women.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I agree with the 
gentleman. I do not think we need another task force. My main focus 
here this evening was the allegations and the points that were made by 
the minority, frankly, last week as we were getting out of session. If 
the gentleman will recall, there was media running all over the place, 
the headlines: What did Bush know, as if Bush knew something.
  This media circus was fed by the minority leader, frankly, the 
Democratic leader on the other side of the aisle. That is not fair 
game. I mean, it is so preposterous to think that any Member of 
Congress, let alone the President of the United States, who I think has 
performed admirably since September 11 in response to September 11, it 
is out of line to come up here and for the sake of media and an 
election year, start saying, well, the President knew about this before 
September 11 and we could have avoided it. As the gentleman knows, we 
have a very active Democrat here on the House floor who goes so far as 
to allege that the President not only knew about September 11, but let 
it happen because he was somehow benefiting from military contracts 
that were going to friends of his in the defense contract. This thing 
is getting out of hand.
  As the gentleman from Georgia has very correctly stated, we lost 
another American yesterday or the day before. We have a war going on 
here. We have a very capable President. We have a very capable Vice 
President, Dick Cheney. We have Condoleezza Rice; we have Colin Powell. 
We have our Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military, our military 
soldiers, from the private on up. Let them do their jobs.

[[Page H2645]]

                              {time}  2015

  They are not back holding secrets from the American people that would 
cause harm to the American people, but by necessity, there are secrets 
that the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence knows that we 
should not know in order to protect the lives of the American people.
  The security of America is number one. I cannot think of a job, I say 
to the gentleman from Georgia, and he would agree with me, I cannot 
think of a responsibility that is higher in its calling to the 
gentleman and I as Congressmen, elected by the people of this country, 
I cannot think of any other issue that is more important than for us to 
provide for the security of the people of this Nation, not only today 
but in the future, whether we talk about missile defense, whether we 
talk about the war in Afghanistan.
  When we start eating up each other, people would think we were 
Siamese fish. Friday or Thursday over here with this media circus going 
on, it was like putting 2 Siamese fish in the same bowl together. We 
are the same team. Siamese fighting fish are bred to fight each other. 
We should not be bred to do that. These allegations against the 
President were strictly for Democratic partisan purposes.
  As the gentleman from Florida said, not all of the Democrats agreed 
with that, and I agree that that is right. So I am not labeling all of 
our colleagues, but that is their leader. They need to get him back in 
the corral, in my opinion. We need to get on with the business at hand, 
which is not creating new task forces or so-called blue ribbon panels 
to oversee the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and then 
pretty soon we'll need a task force to oversee the blue ribbon 
committee that oversees the task force that oversees the intelligence 
force that shares intelligence with the President.
  Wake up. Common sense will tell us the American public wants us to 
get on with the business of protecting the people of this country and 
settling the score, frankly, of what happened on September 11.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
think the gentleman is certainly right.
  One of the things that is important to remember is that when a 
committee is briefed in a classified manner so that that information 
does not get outside the room, and they have all taken an oath to that 
effect, some of the reasons for keeping that information quiet are not 
just to protect our own soldiers on the ground, but the informants in 
various places of the world, all of the countries in the world. I am 
not sure if they number 170, or something. We have intelligence coming 
in from every corner of the globe. We cannot endanger those networks.
  But another factor that is equally as important, some of this has to 
do with the judicial sensitivity, prosecuting folks. We do not go out 
when we are investigating and tell all to the other camp because they 
can cover their tracks, so sometimes we just have to be quiet. This 
idea that everything has to be on the front page of The New York Times 
in order for it to be real is absolutely absurd.
  Mr. McINNIS. I might say to the gentleman, The New York Times is not 
charged with the protection of the people of the United States of 
America. In fact, we saw during the Afghanistan war several reporters, 
including Walter Cronkite, were critical of the media because they were 
taking too much of America's side.
  They are Americans. They are U.S. citizens. But we can see that 
several people in the media take it as their responsibility, although 
they are American citizens, although they receive all the privileges of 
this Nation, that they should be neutral parties.
  The fact is, if they want to assume that role, their utmost 
responsibility is not to provide for the security of the people of this 
Nation. That is our responsibility, and we do it at different levels.
  The President obviously has to know secrets. We do not allow 
everybody access to the nuclear codes, for example. We allow a very, 
very thought-out, delicate system to have that occur, and we do not 
have 435 congressmen and 100 senators who have that capability. We 
structure this thing.
  Last week we saw very quickly where I think several Members were 
perhaps envious of the fact that they are not the President; or for 
political purposes, they just got out of line. That is what I am saying 
tonight, that we have to come back together.
  This war is a war that is going to last for a long time. The tough 
part of the war has not even begun. We have not been hit twice. We got 
hit once. We got hit with the embassies and so on, but I mean since 
September 11. We know it is going to happen again. We have to be on our 
toes.
  On the other hand, we have to be reasonable about this. Every time 
somebody calls an office and says, hey, I think they are going to hit 
the Sears Tower today in Chicago, if they know that every time somebody 
puts an anonymous phone call in that they are going to blow up the 
Sears Tower, that the Sears Tower has to be evacuated, they can 
paralyze this country.

  It is like calling in bomb threats to a school. If we call one in day 
after day after day, there are lots of these kinds of things that go on 
every day in this country.
  What we do, what our responsibility is at the congressional level, is 
to make sure we have properly funded and properly provided for the 
staffing and properly provided other resources that are necessary for 
our Federal Bureau of Investigation and for our intelligence agencies 
to go out, pick up the dots, put the dots together, and present those 
dots, put together, to the President and to the Security Council and to 
our national security adviser, et cetera. That is what needs to occur.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, 
the other thing is what the gentleman is saying is there is such a 
thing as a specific threat. A specific threat is when we know the time 
and place and what method of weapon or destruction that is going to be 
used against us and we can act very quickly against the specific 
threat, if given all the information.
  But a general threat, which there must be hundreds of them that go 
out each year.
  Mr. McINNIS. Thousands.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Thousands, it does not give a time specific, a place 
specific, or a method specific. So what happens is we are guessing.
  Okay, there is going to be something that happens to the water system 
in New York. Do we close down all the drinking water that day? That is 
a general threat, and what is the practical way out of it? There are so 
many things, like the gentleman is saying, are like a bomb scare. The 
gentleman will know that the intelligence-gathering system is not 
perfect.
  I remember that we evacuated on September 11. When we were in the 
Longworth Building we were not told actually to evacuate. There was 
confusion. In fact, I personally went downstairs to the police and 
said, I have some employees here. Are we evacuating? And they said no, 
because at that time nobody knew what was going on.
  We went outside the United States office buildings, outside of the 
Capitol, and we were told that the Capitol had been hit. This was just 
the rumor, not by the police, but this was the rumor on the street, 
that the Capitol had been hit, the mall area had been hit, the State 
Department had been hit, and the Sears Tower. That was the street 
discussion, because no one could get out on their cell phones because 
all the communication was jammed.
  Later in that day, Congress gathered in a safe spot. The gentleman 
will remember that. And those Members of Congress who still had their 
beepers on that could get the word to gather in this particular 
location, we were given our first post-morning of 9-11 briefing. I 
think it was about 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock on September 11.
  At that time, there were still a few airplanes in the air unaccounted 
for. Some of them were off track. Nobody knew for sure what to do with 
those airplanes.
  We were also told at that time that there were 5 airplanes that had 
been involved; that along with the one that had crashed in 
Pennsylvania, another one had crashed just outside of Kentucky. That is 
the information level that was available at that time to Members of the 
United States House and Senate. It is not classified information, but 
that is what we were told.
  So this is a very inexact science. And again, that was from the best 
sources

[[Page H2646]]

to people who wanted to have the best information. So it is not--for 
anybody who knows anything about intelligence, they know that we cannot 
always trust the sources. It is an inexact science.
  For somebody at a time of national tragedy to grab this, this 
question, this uncertainty in the name of partisanship is just 
disgusting and disturbing.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, we saw it on Thursday. I am telling the 
gentleman, we saw when the minority leader, and this was strictly for 
political purposes, went out there and did this little media circus. 
That is the kind of thing that I speak so strongly about up here.
  Let me also point out that we have sources that are bad sources. We 
have false rumors. We have people who want to paralyze us by calling in 
false alarms.
  But the fact is, we have good sources out there. Maybe the most 
important key we can talk about here is the necessity to protect the 
good sources. The President has access through our intelligence network 
to many, many people. I think Condoleezza Rice said it yesterday, that 
many, many people throughout the world care about the United States of 
America. They have good information to give to the United States of 
America, and they share it. Those sources need to be protected.
  Those names should not be given to a task force or a blue ribbon 
committee here in the United States Congress. They should not be given 
to us at all, except under extraordinary circumstances. These sources 
need to be protected.
  It is a part of the structure of the protection blanket that we are 
trying to form over the United States of America and for our allies. It 
is just as important as our missile defense system to keep our sources 
secure, and we have a structure in place that does it. We have got to 
let that structure work, and we have got to refrain from making the 
kind of partisan attack that we saw that took place against President 
Bush when he was, as our local newspaper in Colorado said, bushwhacked. 
Then they went on to say, what did Bush know prior to September 11? 
Their conclusion was, very little, let him do his job, get off his 
back, and this is nothing but a political distraction.
  That is what has happened. That is exactly why I took the podium this 
evening. We have to call it as we are seeing it. What we are calling 
here is what took place last week was not right. They hurt the efforts 
of the country.
  It seems to me that apparently there has been some backpedaling by 
the minority leader and some of the leadership of the Democratic party, 
although I must say there is a colleague from the gentleman's State who 
certainly has not backpedaled from her allegation that Bush did this on 
purpose to assist military contractors.
  But the realization is, we have to come back to our senses. We have 
to get back to steady as she goes. We have good guidance of this 
country with President Bush. He is doing a remarkable job under these 
kinds of circumstances. He is leading this country in a time of war, 
and he is fully and completely focused. Dick Cheney is completely and 
fully focused in responding to the President. Condoleezza Rice is fully 
aware, as the national security adviser; Colin Powell, as our Secretary 
of State. I could go through all the list of names.
  We have probably the most experienced team by far anywhere in the 
world in a government and military structure protecting this country 
over any other country in the world, but it still has some holes in it. 
So we can talk about how we patch the holes, but in the process of 
doing that, in the process of figuring out how to get our goose to lay 
a better egg, we do not pull the goose's neck off.
  So this is the point, that I think we are well prepared, and I think 
we have had a good discussion this evening. I might add, I would ask if 
the gentleman has any concluding remarks. Our time is narrowing.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me say that this House has taken a lot of action on 
a bipartisan basis to try to analyze 9/11, some of it that is 
appropriate to have in the open, and some of it is secret. It has been 
bipartisan. It has also been bicameral.
  But we, Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, we want to 
avoid any possible terrorism, not just America but anywhere in the 
world. So it is in all of our interests at this time to keep the 
shoulders to the grinder and to fight this war in a unified manner, and 
keep the partisan politics in a back room somewhere and let us just get 
this job done.
  Mr. McINNIS. I might say to the gentleman, take a look since last 
Thursday when this media circus began, take a look at how much time 
President Bush and his staff and his intelligence organization, our 
country's intelligence organization, take a look at how much time they 
had to devote to rebutting some of the allegations that were implied by 
the minority leader of this House.
  Look how much time was devoted from our national leaders to address 
these kinds of headlines. This is exactly what our enemy wants to see 
us do. They want to see us so confused within our own government. They 
want to see us like Siamese fighting fish, fighting each other within 
our own government. That is exactly what happened over this last 
weekend.
  We can bet that the President of the United States, instead of having 
his full attention focused on the war and on the possible threats 
against this country, they had to prepare for talk shows on Sunday, 
they had to defend themselves, and they had to get all of their staff 
to spread them out to talk to the media to try and defend themselves, 
that our President did not have knowledge prior to September 11 that 
this country was going to receive a surprise attack that killed 3,000 
people.
  Let me conclude with this. I dare any of my Democratic colleagues, I 
challenge them, any of them, I challenge my Republican colleagues, I 
challenge anybody in America, show me one elected official today that 
would take information, knowing that one of the most horrible events in 
the history of this Nation was going to occur, and they would sit on 
it. Show me one. It does not exist.
  So before any of my colleagues go out there and make the implication 
or the allegation or the outright statement that the President of this 
country, who has done a tremendous job in his leadership as a result of 
September 11, show me, just show me one time where any of these people 
would have gone out and in effect have been a traitor to the country. 
It does not exist. We all care about the security of this Nation. It is 
incumbent upon us to provide for the security of the people of this 
country, and we are doing the best job we can.
  If we can improve our job in a constructive fashion, I am all for it. 
Last week, instead of contributing to or initiating the media circus, 
in my opinion, the minority leader maybe even could have called the 
President himself and said, Mr. President, I do not want to go out and 
talk to the media implying you knew something prior to September 11. 
How can I help?

                              {time}  2030

  That phone call did not take place, and that is what ought to be 
happening. Instead of making our President spend an entire weekend 
trying to defend this position, we should have had our President 
spending the entire weekend doing what he was going to do, and that was 
focus on the immediate needs of all of the citizens of the United 
States instead of having to focus on political defense strategy 
throughout the weekend.
  I will yield to my colleague but would advise we are probably down to 
the last few minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say we have heard so much from 
the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), Senator Daschle, and the 
partisans about the August 6 memo; but there was not a warning in there 
and it was not a threat report. What it was it was an analysis of al 
Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and it talked in general terms about the 
threat that they posed to general world problems; and they did not 
mention anything about using aircraft as missiles. It did say they 
could hijack a plane, but up until then no one had used an airplane as 
a missile.
  So all of this stuff sounds really great for Senator Daschle and the 
Democratic National Committee to sit around and say this is what they

[[Page H2647]]

should have done, but the reality is nobody knew this information. But, 
again, if he wants to criticize President Bush; let him attack him for 
health care, Social Security, whatever, but a war effort while we have 
soldiers on the ground and a very unstable situation in the Middle East 
with our ally, Israel, is very poor judgment, not just bad politics but 
poor judgment.
  Mr. McINNIS. The gentleman agrees with me there is something to be 
learned by September 11. We have learned a lot of things, whether it 
the design of our skyscrapers, what we could have done to assist our 
firefighters and our policemen more, maybe what we could have done for 
our fighter jets that scramble out there. There are lots of things we 
could learn from that. That was not the effort that was being made on 
Thursday. It was not an approach that said let us get together and 
figure this out. Maybe put our minds together and think out what 
constructively we could do to improve the situation.
  Instead, it was a very targeted attack on the President of the United 
States alleging or implying or outright saying the President of the 
United States had knowledge prior to September 11 that would have 
allowed us to avoid September 11. That did not exist. And there is not 
anybody in these Chambers that had that kind of information. And to the 
best of our knowledge only the hijackers and bin Laden and his 
organization knew what was going to happen on September 11.
  If we come together as a team, we can continue to put together or 
march forward to do, again, what was our number one calling. And our 
number one calling is to provide for the security and the protection 
and safety of the people of the United States of America.

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